There are several groups the shell dwellers can be placed into:

These fish, like all shell dwellers, live in snail shells.

These are larger shell dwellers and some may prefer mud-dwelling in the wild.

The three species are similar enough that stores normally sell them all under the common name "shellies" or "shell dwellers".

'The Shell dwellers live upside down.

Cichlids' distinctive pharyngeal teeth, in the throat of the fish, are present in shell dwellers, though small.

Colonial shell dwellers.

Shell dwellers are carnivores that primarily feed on zooplankton and other microscopic and near-microscopic foods.

The animals prowled the two beaches, and Shann guessed they hunted shell dwellers, for at times they dug energetically in the gravel.

In Lake Tanganyika shell dwellers use the Neothauma tanganyicense snail shell as their refuge.

Keeping N. brichardi with Malawian or Victorian cichlids or with Tanganyikan shell dwellers can cause problems.

Shell dwellers are found throughout Lake Tanganyika, along the coasts of Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Tanzania.

Armed with those and the usual teeth along with the typical dissolving qualities of water shell dwellers can eat a variety of foods in the wild and in captivity.

Common shells used for shell dwellers include authentic Neothauma shells, ocean turbo shells, escargot shells, whale eye shells, and Ampullariidae-family shells.

The terms shell dwellers or shelldwellers, shell-breeding, or ostracophil are descriptive terms for cichlid fish that use the empty shells of aquatic snails as sites for breeding and shelter.

The Malawi shell dwellers, which may comprise several species but as yet only Pseudotropheus lanisticola is certain, one of the smallest mbuna in Lake Malawi at a bare 7 cm.

N. similis should not be kept with other shell dwellers - particularly Altolamprologus compressiceps "Sumbu shell", a predator - except when the territories are well-defined by rocks, mounds of sand, or plants.

The Malawi shell dweller, Pseudotropheus lanisticola, was first identified in 1964 along with many other mbuna in that lake, but the Tanganyikan shell dwellers were found primarily in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The terms shell dwellers or shelldwellers, shell-breeding, or ostracophil are descriptive terms for cichlid fish that use the empty shells of aquatic snails as sites for breeding and shelter.

But when the smallest (some Apistogrammas and some Tanganyikan shelldwellers) are barely 1" when adult, and the largest (Boulengerochromis microlepis ) 36", then it stands to reason that they won't mix.

The terms shell dwellers or shelldwellers, shell-breeding, or ostracophil are descriptive terms for cichlid fish that use the empty shells of aquatic snails as sites for breeding and shelter.